Hello, it's the week of the Annual Crufts dog show here in the UK, and last year there was a huge furore surrounding the Kennel Club and it's attitude towards certain breeding methods regarding several specific breeds, including, among others, the German Shepherd, the Cavalier and the British Bulldog. The debate, regarding health issues surrounding in/line breeding, has raged all year with a lot of bad blood surfacing between the GSC and the Kennel Club being reported in many of the popular dog press. This year Crufts is being televised by a commercial tv station, having been dropped by the BBC after years of broadcasting, following a well publicised expose last year damning some of these practices by certain breeders. The whole thing has erupted again with a forthcoming further documentary about the inbreeding/line breeding issue, to be shown immediately after the first day of the show, and the consequences therein of the said practice. My question is, is the in/line breeding issue purely based on moral grounds, i.e. it is unnatural and unpalatable, or is there genuine cause for concern over health and temperament of pedigree dogs? I know that a lot of show dogs have a 'shelf life' and I have seen some pretty unsound, highly line bred dogs in the guard breeds, that were in my opinion unwisely advertised and placed as pets, when a more suitable placement may have been in the services or security, but that is only my opinion. I am interested to hear from people with experience of this practice, good, bad, right or wrong, and on what basis are the arguements for the rights or wrongs??
Kind regards, Tracey Howes

speaking strictly about GSDs, American showlines and maybe UK showlines as well, are a disgrace. Even the German Showlines are questionable to some people. Anything that detracts from the working characteristics and the health of the breed should be banned. Some level of line breeding in necessary but from what I've seen in bull dogs and GSD showlines borders on cruelty.

Hi Tracey,

I've done linebreeding in several different animal species mice, purebred rabbits, purebred cavies, and later this year I will be doing a line breeding in dogs.

To get to the nuts and bolts of line breeding the idea is that with any breeding you will see expressed a number of traits within the possible variation scope with averages towards the middle in all things between the two parents, temperament, confirmation, and working ability. However when you begin progressively line breeding it begins to narrow the variation scope more and more and that's when you begin to run into issues. The problem with purebred dogs is that they're already pretty closely bottlenecked due to modern closed registries, frequently used sires, and show ring pressure towards a certain "type" which may have nothing to do with the dog's function. As such while there is a greater incidence of resulting type being more consistent within a generation it can also have unforeseen consequences to health, temperament, and pressure to change breed type. Unlike other purebred animals there is no such thing as a "grade" to introduce desired vigor but rather it has to be a pretty specific decision by the breed club in charge to open the registry and even then the opening can be pretty tightly controlled to the point of impossible and I have never heard of an opening that allowed another identified breed in. In dogs once a mutt always a mutt, at least by akc rules.

So with my own breed the papillon we begin to see showring breeding pressure produce mentally unstable, fragile, smaller and smaller dogs with more extreme traits like stop length getting shorter vs skull length, longer hair growth, finer bone, and larger ears. While on the surface this seems very cosmetic the finer bone structure doesn't always allow dogs to live normal house dog lives, the smaller and smaller size increases incidents of difficulty housebreaking, liver shunts, heart issues, and birthing problems, the sharper stop rise is increasing incidents of neural problems like spinning, seizures, and a couple new issues just bridging the horizon. Right now of toy breeds the papillon is pretty healthy on the whole, my concern is the future.

Linebreeding (really breeding in general) in dogs is not something for the faint of heart if you are responsible. If you get it right and it results in lovely puppies that are a testament to their breed it's considered a success, but if you line breed and it results in crippling health issues, structural issues that make the dog lame or temperament inbalance it's not quite the same as getting it wrong with a rabbit or a cow where you can eat your mistakes and simply move on. There is a reason we prize the dog in society and we have to take that into consideration.

Hi Tracey,

It was found there are very sound scientific reasons for the religious ban on certain practices in human society: mating of close blood relatives and consumption of certain foods, for example. Over the centuries the bans were reinforced by constant reminders from the highest authority how abhorrent those practices are. Hence the "unnatural and unpalatable" perception. The documentary explains in good detail the genetic issues caused by mating of close blood relatives. Such practices in humans result in exactly the same problems. In purebred dogs the damage to the species is exponentially multiplied because it is being done on purpose on a huge scale.

I have been interested in genetics for some time and did a lot of reading at some time.

I do find this all very interesting, I wonder if packs of dogs in the wild mate within the family group, I suppose it does happen, if I am honest I am sceptical about the justification of this practice to fulfill the desire to create the optimum specimen purely for the fee for subsequent litters of show/field champions, or the prize for producing gundogs with the same traits as their parents just to get results in the field, I am fairly ignorant about genetics and the outcome of line/inbreeding matings, I wonder what the pups of these pairings suffer from psychologically, or am I being naive?

 Quote: tracey howes

I wonder what the pups of these pairings suffer from psychologically, or am I being naive?

Tracey,

What exactly are you trying to get at? How does one assess if a dog is psychologically damaged? I'm good at reading my dogs but I am not so far off my rocker to be able to interpret dog dreams or believe that my dogs may have some deep psychosis as a result of inbreeding or anything else. I use to joke that for my dog who yelped in his sleep that every night was another dream where the toilet seat fell. It doesn't mean that the dog needs therapy to bark about his mother.

As far as type, inbreeding etc. It certainly does happen in the wild and to a point genetic bottlenecking happens in the wild as well in pretty much all animals. Where things go sideways is that sometimes the gene pool variations get a little shallow which also happens in the wild. Best example I know of is the cheetah which has as much gene similarity across the entire species as a inbred strain of laboratory mice. What this has caused as a result is that it's very possible that cheetahs will not go extinct from interference from mankind but simply from being too sterile to reproduce which as I understand it is a fairly common occurrence for these animals even in the wild.

To bring it back to dogs however again as I pointed out before my concern with line breeding is that it brings out occurrences of undesired traits that we may not have even been aware of before. These traits can increase in frequency as line breeding occurs more and more with a higher COI variable.

I'm not really trying to get at anything! I am genuinley interested in other peoples take on this thorny subject, I am intrigued by animal, especially canine behaviour, specifically how or if their domestication has altered natural behaviour, but you have answered one of my questions about inbreeding in the wild, if I am honest I don't like the thought that dogs are used by some owners purely for glory in the ring, especially if the dogs have unhealthy and unhappy lives as a result of this, but I am guilty of being sentimental about animals, and I guess I am looking for black and white answers, I don't know enough about the subject which is why I asked the question to start with! Thanks for replying.
Very Kind regards, Tracey

Hi Tracy:

I have an in/line bred husky (apparently his papa was also his uncle). Watching this pup struggle through life has left me with a very negative opinion of this process so I will hold my comments in that regard. What I did want to share is the neurological and physical problems this little boy has been plagued with.

He had 4 siblings -three were sold for 800.00 and promptly euthanized by the owners due to early onset myleopathy – (spinal cord problems that cause muscle weakness and lack of coordination). An investigation ensued into the breeders and my boy and a sister were found, with the almost dead mother, in appalling conditions. Mom was immediately euthanized, I took the boy and the sister made it another 2 weeks before it was determined that she was beyond saving. Sad story… yes and after the sister was euthanized I was told that this would also be in the best interest of by boy as well. We were attached and I figured we’d stick it out and see how he progressed.

The myleopathy was a scary thing. For lack of a better word it would look like he was having seizures. This wasn’t the case though as his eyes were clear and focused (and in the beginning-a look of fear/helplessness) when he started to short circuit. He would kick his little legs but couldn’t get up. We (him and us) grew to recognize the symptoms and learned to just wait it out – on walks, in the car, at any given moment – never knowing when this would come on. He was supposed to be fully paralyzed by six months – lots of exercise, a raw diet and numerous vitamin/herbal concoctions still have him motoring.

He had one testicle that didn’t drop and when he hit 9 months (totally not expected) we figured it was time to do something. The little guy was butchered while trying to locate it (found in the abdomen) and went through a long recovery process – but again made it.

He will be turning 9 years old in August and has full blown pituitary gland cushing’s which he is taking Lysodren for. Again another horrendous process when first inducting the medication but now he is on the maintenance dose which he is reacting to perfectly too.

Was it a mistake to want to provide a life for this human blunder caused out of greed and apathy - perhaps, but having it to do all over again – I wouldn’t change a thing.

You questioned the psychological component. You know, I truly don’t think that he or any of the other members of my pack see him any differently. He’s not as strong or fast, he stumbles as lot and his coat is funny; but he is a very integral member of our pack and I believe he is truly happy.

He is definitely not your typical idea of a husky or a dog for that matter and requires a special kind of commitment.

It was humans that created this. With the over population of unwanted, healthy animals it’s always so easy to cover up these kinds of mistakes by simply destroying them. Caring for and nurturing one of these special creatures has brought us a tremendous amount of joy but it has also shown us a whole new meaning to the horrors that irresponsible breeding can create.

It is a testament to you as his owner that the little chap has had a chance at life and that with determination and what has clearly been a long hard slog, has been given all the love and care a dog with those problems has needed, he could have so easliy been written off and PTS, and for what my humble and unknowledgeable opinion is worth, I would have done the same thing,see it through to the end. Thanks for your message.
Kind regards.